Jerne, << YUR nee, >> Niels Kaj (1911-1994), was a Danish and British medical researcher who developed new insights into the human immune system. For his theories, Jerne shared the 1984 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with two other immunology researchers, Cesar Milstein of Argentina and the United Kingdom, and Georges J. F. Kohler of Germany.
The Nobel committee honored Jerne for three of his theories in particular. The theories explain (1) how molecules called antibodies are custom-designed by the immune system to attack different bacteria or viruses; (2) how the immune system develops and matures; and (3) how the system goes into action to fight disease and returns to rest when it is no longer needed.
Jerne was born in London to Danish parents and grew up in Denmark. He held both Danish and British citizenship. He studied at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and received his M.D. degree from Copenhagen in 1951.
Jerne did research at the Danish State Serum Institute in Copenhagen from 1943 to 1955. From 1956 to 1962, he served as chief medical officer at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. During the 1960’s, he held a series of research and academic positions in Switzerland, the United States, and West Germany. He taught at the University of Geneva from 1960 to 1962, headed the Department of Microbiology at the University of Pittsburgh from 1962 to 1966, and taught at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt from 1966 to 1969. He helped establish the Basel Institute of Immunology in Switzerland and headed it from 1969 to 1980.
